Introduction
As metaphors go, last year's Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga 13, a 13-inch touchscreen laptop with a hinge that let the display flip all the way around to meet its rear, was easy to understand. But now Lenovo has come up with a lighter, altogether more nimble model in the Lenovo Ideapad Yoga 11S, the 11-inch edition.
Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga 11S – Design
The Lenovo Yoga 11S is undoubtedly one of Lenovo’s better-looking laptops. It has the Thinkpad-style keyboard, with its respectable travel, firm action and overall good typing experience – especially for its diminutive size – but has none of the geeky crust of something like the ThinkPad X1 Carbon.
It has a colourful lid, orange in the model we saw, and underside. To offset this, the inside of the Lenovo Yoga 11S is plain, immaculate and tasteful. The keyboard surround is matt - rather than glossy - textured for a tactile finish, and bereft of colour.
In common with many Lenovo laptops, the Yoga 11S has a slightly chunky book-like design when closed, rather than attempting to make a small section of the laptop super-slim for the sake of an attention-grabbing feature bullet point. It’s a smart, well-made laptop, and one that’s super-portable thanks to its petite dimensions and reasonably light 1.4kg weight.
Of course, the folding non-removable screen naturally consigns this device to a niche.
Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga 11S – Screen
The unqiue selling point of the Yoga series is the rotating screen. It flips around a smooth, free hinge – think a normal laptop hinge, but one that moves through nearly 360 degrees rather than the standard 120-odd.
Like the original 13-inch Yoga, the keyboard disables itself when the screen is flipped over, so you don’t accidentally press keys while using the laptop like a tablet. If anything, the Yoga 11S’s unusual screen felt more natural in this smaller version, where holding it like a tablet doesn’t feel quite so alien. However, it remains much heavier than a dedicated tablet, which would usually weigh at least 500g less.
Of course, there are more than just two use scenarios for the screen – you can prop the Lenovo Yoga 11S up like a picture frame, for example. This comes in handy if you want to watch a movie. The interesting screen mechanics help to hide a fairly unremarkable screen.
It’s a 1366 x 768 pixel resolution display, using an IPS panel. Next to some tablet screens this is a little low-res, but by laptop standards this is a high-end screen. Viewing angles are great, image quality is good. You only miss out on a shade of pixel-packedness.
Lenovo Yoga 11S – Specs
The Yoga 11S’s stand-out flip-over design feature will undoubtedly cause some to dismiss the Lenovo Yoga 11S as a bit of a gimmick, but this is a powerful laptop. It runs the full version of Windows 8, and uses the Intel Core i series of processors. The exact spec will depend on your configuration. It’s a whole lot more powerful than the Windows RT Yoga 11.
CPU aside, the Lenovo Yoga 11S will be available with up to 8GB of RAM and 256GB of SSD-based storage. Naturally, in a device of this size optical drives and dedicated graphics cards are struck off the invite list immediately.
Lenovo says the battery will last for around six hours off a charge – respectable for a small laptop but not quite long enough for day-long usage.
Lenovo Yoga 11S – Connectivity
As with any Ultrabook-style device, one of the Lenovo Yoga 11S’s most obvious compromises is in its connectivity. You get an HDMI and USB port on one edge and a USB 3.0 port on the other. There is also an SD memory card slot.
Bluetooth and Wi-Fi are, of course, on-board. 3G is not included as standard, however.
First Impressions
The Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga 11S is an oddball laptop if you focus too much on its unusual hinge. Think of it as a side feature, however, and the truth is revealed. This is an attractive, versatile and thoroughly practical laptop. It’s best thought-of as a laptop first and a tablet second, as it’s a bit too heavy to carry for long periods and having a keyboard on the rear is not always desirable. But it’s a well-made, good-looking, powerful hybrid.
